Just tested, set up cifs1 share on my server. It hasn't finished scanning yet, but Windows Media Player is showing several thousand tracks right now, and they play OK. DNLA page still shows "scan in progress".

The logs show a considerable number of messages for different files which have no tags or are corrupted. All seems perfectly normal.

I really don't know what the problem is.
One think I noticed is that out of the two cifs I'm mounting both are reported as unmounted by the GUI, however if I use ssh into the router I can see the content inside /cifs1 and /cifs2, so I don't think this is related.
The other think is: /cifs2 is exported by the NAS read only and I'm saving the database in RAM... I did try though to change it to read/write and save the database into /cifs2 but still no luck.
On the DLNA TV I can see the tomato dlna server but no content.

Where can I find the config file inside tomato? Or perhaps do it use nvram settings...?

This is the message I got into the log this morning (still no videos available):

If you start minidlna from the command line or the GUI at Tools>System you can use a switch to get verbose logs. The command is "minidlna -d" without the "quotes" (d for debug I think). To stop minidlna use "service dlna stop"

Where can I find the config file inside tomato?

Click to expand...

The config file for minidlna is at /etc/minidlna.config

Also, if you get the database created you might want to save a copy of it, especially if it is large. A media scan of my system takes about 90 minutes and it's not hard to recreate the database by accident while playing around.

Sorry, but I don't know what your problem is. My media and databases are on USB HDDs. Do you have a USB HDD or thumb drive to test with to eliminate or identify the cifs as the issue?

database:
If I choose RAM from the gui the /etc/minidlna.conf file contains this line:
db_dir=/var/run/minidlna/.db
If I choose manually a destination e.g. /cifs2 the share is indeed writable.

I've tried lot of things, disable inotify (btw shouldn't this be disabled by default?) change port number a.s.o. running afterwards the command in debugmode.
It just doesn't say anything about "scanning", not even if I call minidlna with -R option.

I'm stating to think this could be a NAS problem somehow as I have 3x tomato routers and they all behave the same way.

Finally I think it would be a good idea to have the dlna server customizable via GUI in case somebody wants to run 2 or more minidlna on the same LAN (not my case but who knows...).

Yes, I did erase the NVRAM! This is strange to me... I'm wondering if this is related to the fact that the /cifs1 and /cifs2 are reported as not mounted by the GUI despite the fact that they are instead (verified via ssh).

I have other two tomato on my LAN with exactly the same cifs mounting issue. It makes sense for me to now investigate the NAS instead!
It's a freeNas 8.04 I'll go through the samba parameters to see if there's something wrong in there.
Just one question: when I save the CIFS settings I get a single line in the log:

Another piece of info: using a 4th tomato (tomatovpn): Tomato Firmware v1.28.8754 ND USB vpn3.6
The cifs mounting (pointing to exactly the same share) works perfectly --> reported as mounted.
Was the cifs client updated on toastman recently? perhaps something changed? Or perhaps it's really just the NAS playing funny...

cifs is reported as "mounted". I did some troubleshooting on the NAS and there's nothing it might suggest there's something wrong. I think the fact that different version of the firmware are not working in the same way could mean something (for the firmware I mean).

still if nobody else is experiencing these problems... I don't know what to think any more

Good tip. I tried the windows share on K26 and yes! it works -> mounted and reported mounted. by the GUI. So I did some additional troubleshooting. Not sure why but on K26 only the mtab has this additional parameters that apparently the NAS doesn't like: posixpaths
Mountin the NAS share on K24 this command is not present in the mtab and the GUI reports the share as mounted.
Note in K26 the posixpaths is added automatically mounting the NAS samba share but NOT the windows share. It seems like tomato makes a distintion between the two. I tried to mount manually without posixpath and it does work (I can see the content of the share) but I can't verify the GUI this way.
My guess is that posixpath is not needed and confuses tomato when it comes to verify the mounting status.

1)
My media directory is pretty large and it currently needs 71MB so I've tried was to move the DB location from the default RAM into cifs1 instead.. I'm running this on a RT-N16 with 128Mb of RAM so even RAM would have been enough I guess... still, using cifs1 doesn't solve anything. So I would exclude this point.

2)
When I try to run the built in minidlna I can see the process activated:

I'm starting to think that cifs and it's mounting parameters are not related to this... is it possible instead that minidlna within tomato has been compiled differently compared to this optware version?

1)
My media directory is pretty large and it currently needs 71MB so I've tried was to move the DB location from the default RAM into cifs1 instead.. I'm running this on a RT-N16 with 128Mb of RAM so even RAM would have been enough I guess... still, using cifs1 doesn't solve anything. So I would exclude this point.

2)
When I try to run the built in minidlna I can see the process activated:

I'm starting to think that cifs and it's mounting parameters are not related to this... is it possible instead that minidlna within tomato has been compiled differently compared to this optware version?